Skiing has brought the world a number of dubious trends over the years. In the 80s and 90s one of those trends was the appearance of a plague of ski-related cartoons. Things got so bad that, for a time, anyone vaguely aware of the sport was exposed to an array of them, through unwanted Christmas presents, Fat Face/White Stuff t-shirts worn by posh ski punters and seeing them decorating the walls of almost every resort toilet.

Like this one for example, usually seen accompanied by some sort of 'on the piste' joke

Over time snowboarding has taken on some of the trends of skiing but fortunately the pandemic of the snowboarding cartoon has not reached us. Wanting to understand how we avoided this danger I have run a test of the snowboard cartoons available in the internet to understand why it hasn’t caught on.

This guy’s story is so bonkers it just didn't fit into our other categories so this is a first article in a new segment we hope we will see a lot more of - Notorious Snowboarders

Notorious Snowboarder #1: Dr. Frederick Lenz, III – Snowboarder, Author and Cult Leader

In the late 90s Frederick Lens wrote a couple of best selling books that were a strange mix of new-age religion and snowboarding. Lenz, who considered himself to be a “World-class snowboarder”, based his novels on his experiences of snowboarding in the Himalayas. Let’s take a look at the book the critics describe as:

"Poorly researched crud."  - The Denver Post

"Terrifically dull and stupefying," and "Aside from failing on every level, there is nothing remarkable about this novel, except that it was published."  - The Santa Fe Sun

Following last week’s article on snowboarder slash rappers, this week we take a look at a selection of rapper slash snowboarders...

Snowboarding Celebrity No. 10: Coolio 

In 1995 Artis Leon Ivey, Jr released his second album, Gangster’s Paradise. The title track was the biggest selling single in the US that year. Since 1995 he has released some other stuff but is now best known for appearing in just about any TV show that will take him, including:

Hip-hop has given a lot to snowboarding over the years, from the music in videos to the baggy gangster clothes, but has snowboarding given anything back? Well some people have really had a try.